Copper electrical interconnections between separate devices (e.g., chips or boards) are expected to support data rates of up to fifteen gigabits per second. However, due to high latency, cross-talk between channels, frequency-dependent loss, high power dissipation, and other factors, copper interconnections will likely run into significant challenges when data transmission rates exceed that amount. Optical interconnections provide good solutions with respect to some of these issues, but create their own set of difficulties.